Years ago, I sat down with my parents and interviewed them for four hours.
It’s the interview I wrote about in four hours I can no longer watch.
Somewhere during those four hours, Mom and Dad told me something that surprised me.
They wished they had spent more time with me and my brothers when we were growing up.
I understood what they meant.
But the more I’ve thought about growing up on our farm, the more I’ve realized they did spend time with us.
We just didn’t call it that.
During planting and harvest, I spent hours with Mom waiting for the grain wagon to bring another load from the field.
She taught me how to read during some of those waits.
The wagon would arrive, we’d unload the grain into the truck, haul it to the elevator for storage, unload, drive back to the field and wait for the next load.
Then we’d do it again.
Nobody would have called that quality family time.
It was just harvest.
Other days, I rode with Dad in the combine.
One particular day, Dad and my Uncle Fred were harvesting corn. I was riding with Dad in the combine while Fred drove the tractor and grain wagon alongside us.
When the combine filled, Dad extended the auger over the wagon and unloaded corn while both machines continued moving through the field.
It was a bit of choreography that farmers didn’t think twice about—two enormous machines rolling side by side, close enough that a steady stream of corn could pour from one into the other without stopping.
Uncle Fred was a character.
He was one of those people who seemed to have actually lived the life the rest of us only talk about living. He’d spent time in Los Angeles and had even been an extra in the original Ben-Hur.
By the time I knew him, his eyesight wasn’t what it once was.
He had thick glasses when he bothered to wear them. When he didn’t, he squinted at the world as though determination alone might bring it into focus.
Naturally, Uncle Fred had a shotgun.
So did Dad.
That wasn’t particularly unusual during corn harvest. Pheasants would often flush from the rows as the equipment moved through the field.
Sure enough, a pheasant suddenly took off running down a corn row ahead of us.
Fred saw it.
Or at least saw enough of it.
He slammed the tractor to a stop.
Dad stopped the combine at almost exactly the same moment. The auger was still extended over Fred’s wagon, and if Dad had kept moving, we’d have been unloading our corn onto the ground instead.
Fred jumped down with his shotgun.
The pheasant apparently decided running wasn’t working.
It changed direction, took flight and came directly over our combine.
Dad saw that, too.
“Hit the deck!”
I dropped.
BOOM.
I can still remember seeing the smoke coming from the barrel of Fred’s shotgun as the pheasant flew over the cab.
The pheasant survived.
So did we.
The corn even stayed in the wagon.
Fred climbed back into the tractor.
Harvest continued.
Because that’s what you did.
Years later, my parents remembered all the things they didn’t do with us.
I remember the things we did.
Mom teaching me to read while we waited for another load of grain.
Trips to the elevator.
Riding beside Dad in the combine.
Uncle Fred squinting across a cornfield at a pheasant he probably couldn’t see all that well.
And Dad yelling, “Hit the deck!”
Maybe that’s the problem with family time.
We expect it to announce itself.
Most of the time, it doesn’t.
Sometimes it’s just an ordinary afternoon you don’t realize you’re keeping.
If this resonated with you, you’re not alone.
